Re: Mutable R's

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> En réponse à Garth Wallace <gwalla@...>:
>
>
>>Rachel Klippenstein wrote:
>>
>>>My R in Ikanirae Seru is a bit undecided too, wavering
>>>mostly between and approximant [r\] and a tap [4], but
>>>that can be explained that it's a language with
>>>phonology drawing on Japanese, which has [4],
>>
>>I'm pretty sure Japanese has [l\], not [4].
>
> ?! That's the first time I hear that one. To me, Japanese and Spanish have
> exactly the same rhotic, and it's definitely [4]. It doesn't sound like [l\] at
> all. Actually, it has nothing lateral in it!
>
>>  At least that's what I was
>>taught ("try to pronounce a d, r, and l all at once") and what I hear.
>
> Well, American intervocalic 'd' is commonly pronounced [4], so that's why you
> were taught it this way. And the usual comment that the Japanese 'r' is
> between 'r' and 'l' is only due to the fact that Japanese people pronounce [4]
> in borrowed words with a 'l'. But I am 100% sure that the Japanese 'r' is a
> simple [4]. And I have 200 episodes of Sailor Moon in original version at home
> to comfort me in my opinion ;))) .
My teacher also insisted that it wasn't the same as a Spanish R. And a
native speaker I know has told me that my pronunciation is very good (in
general; he wasn't singling out how I pronounce R). Also, some time ago
I read about the IPA that it has "its own character for the Japanese
R"...can't remember where though, it's been a long time.

But I'm not a native speaker either, so I may be totally off base about
this.

Replies